My name is Jake McGowan-Lowe, and I'm a fourteen year-old naturalist and bone collector from Scotland. I've been collecting skulls and bones since I was six, and I now have hundreds of amazing skulls and thousands of other bones.

I began blogging about bones when I was seven, and blogged at least once a week until February 2016 when I took a break from blogging. (that's 416 posts in total !)
Mostly it was about skulls or bones that I found, but sometimes it was about places I explored or wildlife that I saw on my walks. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it !

I've been blogging now at least once a week for six years and seven months, and this is my 416th blog post here. It's been an exhausting, brilliant and amazing journey, but I've made the very difficult decision that it's time to take a break from blogging for a while.

I began blogging when I was seven because I wanted to share more about the bones I found and the places I explored around my village. When I wrote my very first blog post, which only a couple of people read at the time, I never imagined that I would create something read by thousands of people every week.

Since I first found this, I have seen them loads more times and finally got to the bottom of the mystery about these strange formations - but I've just realised I never blogged about it ! Since my village is covered in snow and ice at the moment, this seemed the right time to blog about it !

Exploring old buildings can be dangerous.
. Talk to mum or dad about it first. Dads are more likely to say yes because they are sillier.

WARNING: Even by my standards, climbing into a disused, 50 year old flooded underground structure in the remote countryside is a really dangerous idea. But you're probably going to do it anyway, so here's the rules. Never do it alone, always have someone at the top, bring a rope, phone, torch and appropriate footwear, and make sure your tetanus jabs are up to date !

This picture shows a little bit of history hidden away - and one I've been meaning to explore for ages ! In some remote woodland outside my village is a fenced off clearing, where there are three tiny structures. Two are no bigger than a tree stump, and the third looks the size of a sheep trough form a distance. This is a place that was designed to be difficult to find - and also it's a bit of local history you may find near you !

Two of the most common skulls that I find are deer and sheep. There's huge variation in different types of deer and breeds of sheep - but there are some rules which can tell you which are which.

They can look very similar, because they are both herbivores with eyes on the side of their heads. So, I'm going to take you how to tell the difference between the two skulls, even if you only have a small fragment of the skull. In all of this I'm using a red deer skull, as the bigger UK deer (red, sika, fallow) are closer in size to sheep than the smaller deer (such as Chinese Water Deer, muntjac and roe) and fragments can be mistaken for sheep...read on to find out more !

This week's post is partly inspired by Sir David Attenborough and Ben Garrod's one-off TV special, Attenborough and the Giant Dinosaur, which is on BBC1 at 6.30pm tonight - don't miss it ! Read about it here.

I spent Christmas and New Year in Northern Ireland. Belfast is home to one of my favourite museums - the Ulster Museum - which has a particularly cool skeleton of a Triceratops horridus. Triceratops are one of the best known dinosaurs, along with the T-rex, which I wrote about here.

Next Sunday, there is a must see programme for bone and dinosaur lovers. Ben Garrod and Sir David Attenborough are two of the most amazing presenters, and now they are doing a TV programme together. It will be called Attenborough And The Giant Dinosaur and it will be on BBC One on Sunday the 24th of January at 6:30pm.

Apart from being a great bit of TV, there is a bit of a personal connection for me. As you probably remember, in December 2014 I was on The One Show with Sir David. It was one of the best moments of my life, as I have always wanted to meet him. When I was on the One Show sofa, they showed a pre-recorded piece of Ben and I analysing bones at Bristol Museum. Ben also presented a brilliant BBC TV series called Secrets of BONES, which I wrote about here, and has been a great inspiration to me (we first met at the Grant Museum in London) .Read on to find out more about the dig !

Of the 1,214 emails I received last year, many of them are from people trying to identify bones. This can be tricky - especially as they can be from animals from other countries that I've rarely seen before !

Here are some of the recent ones I've had - many of which have me stumped ! Can you help me out or give me some clues ?

At the end of each year, since the start of my blog, I have written a post on New Year's Eve, looking back on the year. At the end of last year, I said that this year would not have been as good as last.- it's not every year that your first book comes out, you get to present a copy to the Royal Family, and then do live TV on the BBC with Sir David Attenborough - but this year has had its good moments.

I always enjoy writing these posts, because it reminds me of the best parts of the year, and there was quite a lot this year ! This is what I have learned...

Happy Christmas ! I'm spending time with my family and having a great time. Sadly, it's not snowing over here, and we only had about two or three snow days in Scotland so far - I hope we get more, because it's really beautiful near my house when it snows. (Apart from a few winters ago when it got so cold it was -18c one night)

Here's a quick fun fact for Christmas. Rudolph, Santa's reindeer was actually most likely to have been a girl. How do I know this ? It's to do with the timing of when antlers fall off and regrow each year. Both male and female reindeer have antlers (which is unusual for deer - normally it's just males). Anyway, male reindeer's antlers usually fall off before Christmas time, whereas the female's antlers do not, making Rudolph more likely to be a girl (*) ! (*) Scientists tend to try and be very exact about the timings of antlers, but I've found it varies a LOT with roe deer - it depends on age, diet, health and region. I've seen roe deer still in velvet in May, and other roe deer close by with hard antlers by March. Here's my guide anyway.

So why is it happening ? To find out, we need to go back in the past. After WWII, most of the timber was used in the war effort, and to replenish the stock, there were tax incentives to plant thousands of trees were planted in the 1960s and 70s. These trees take about 40 or 50 years to grow, so are now coming to maturity. The problem is, the tax breaks stopped in the 1990s, so there aren't enough plantations to replace those being cut down.

About me

I'm Jake McGowan-Lowe and I am a bone collector, naturalist, blogger and author as seen on BBC's The One Show, Autumnwatch, Winterwatch, CBBC Wild, Newsround and BBC Breakfast.

I've appeared on the BBC alongside such experts as Sir David Attenborough, Chris Packham, Nick Baker and Ben Garrod. BBC Wildlife Magazine says I'm one of the 50 most influential conservationists in the UK, and The Courier ranked me as the 24th most influential person in 2015.

I am fourteen years old, and I live in a beautiful part of Scotland. I love walking, exploring, watching wildlife and collecting bones. I've been collecting bones since I was six, and I blogged here every week between July 2009 (when I was seven) until February 2016, when I took a break.

You can read more about why I began blogging here, and my advice to other kids wanting to blog here.

Jake's Bones: The book !

Like this blog ? Buy the book ! This blog and my collection led to a book deal for a brilliant childrens' book published by Hachette Children's. It's now been published in the UK, Ireland, the USA, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands (called Het Grote Bottenboek van Jake) and South Korea.

It was even shortlisted for the prestigious Royal Society 2015 Young Person's Book Prize !

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Me in the news

There have been stories about me in The Times, the Daily Telegraph Magazine, the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday,The Sun, Scotland on Sunday, the Sunday Mail, the Dundee Courier, the Perthshire Advertiser, the Stirling Observer, onBBC Radio Scotland, on the STV news, and I've even been on CBBC Wild, CBBC Newsround, The One Show, BBC Autumnwatchand Winterwatch !